What Happened to Acronis True Image

I was attracted here due to some issues with Acronis and saw a 2 year old thread dealing with Acronis issues with newer systems, so rather than add to the old thread I thought it more relevant to start a new one and share my experiences this last month.

Having issues with a brand new Acer Ultrabook, I restored an image file created in Acronis 2013, only to have that restore trash my entire OS and make it impossible to even install any version of Windows. While I am experienced and work in the business, I have no clue what actually happened as Acronis rescue disk showed the restore completed, but I could never again either see the hard drive or install anything to it, never mind repair anything. That went back to Acer as they were no help.

I didn't really like that laptop anyway as I thought it was a cheap imitation of better hardware so I bought a new Sony E series Ultrabook P17 laptop with 3rd Gen i5 cpu, 6 gb ram etc....after installing my programs, setting up Outlook for email accounts and tweaking the system, my last step is to always install Acronis True Image (2013) and then make an image file. I thought something was odd when system did not ask me to reboot to complete install and when I tried to open Acronis nothing happened which also was odd but I decided I must have missed the call to restart so I rebooted the system and got stuck in an endless "repair your system" loop which culminated with 2 levels of Sony tech support and no solution. I had originally thought there was a simple fix, and the Acronis install never even occurred to me as the problem, since it has always been my solution. However when Sony offered only a recovery reinstall after an exhaustive attempt to recover, I started to think about that very thing.

Reluctantly I spent the entire next day doing just that and you can believe when done the last thing I was about to do would be install Acronis ever again. I ran the Sony backup to create disks and then decided to boot to Acronis Rescue Disk and make an image file that way, except the disk would not boot. Realizing I had recognize legacy hardware it then booted except it could not see the hard drive. Now I started to realize how deep this problem really was....during the install I noticed that the Sony defaulted to System Restore off, for some reason I will never understand so I remedied that.

I then installed Macrium reflect which went in perfectly and made an image file to an external drive. I noted the Linux Rescue cd would not boot so I made the PE Windows restore disk which took much longer but did boot realizing the Uefi bios is at the heart of a lot of these issues. I also made sure the disk could see the drives and restore and I have to say it is so simple to use and easy to work with I intend to buy paid version and stay with it for good.

I knew many old execs at Acronis in the years I worked with them from other forums and could see changes coming where they were trying to grow too fast, save money on execs doing so but had no clue exactly how bad things had gotten there. Too bad it used to be great software but now seeing it totally hose two systems beyond repair I will never look back!

 

Hi Rich

Welcome to Wilders!

Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. Indeed, Acronis was once the go to app for imaging for many folks, but you are correct, they got side tracked over the last few years it appears, and unfortunately that usually happens when a company loses sight of their business and customer service model and only cares about profit.

It is becoming far too common to witness this, but thankfully there are several excellent companies that have not forgot about their primary goals of having reliable software solutions for reasonable cost and consistent customer service.

Macrium is one of those companies and you made a great choice in choosing them. Glad to hear it was able to do as advertised and get your system back to a stable condition.

I assume from your description, that it was a UEFI/GPT issue? And if so, how frustrating that a name such as Acronis still stumbles over it, but it has been an area of problems for some imaging apps, not just Acronis. I never tried 2013 version, simply too bloated for my taste.

From what I have read here at Wilders, Acronis was very reliable up to 2012 perhaps? While some still prefer 2010/2011 versions. In any case, you found a solution that worked for you and that is what counts.

I do hope Acronis can gain a better focus on behalf of their customers and get a better balance in their business model.

If you had not yet heard about it, perhaps at some point you may also want to consider trying out AX64 Time Machine which has quite an extensive thread here in this section. It is a very unique backup/imaging/restore software fairly priced and although still young, it has matured into a simple and quite effective solution. Just wanted to mention it in case you had not read about it. The developer, Isso, is a member here and has done a fantastic job at addressing issues during the alpha/beta stages and it has been fascinating to follow AND see just how good customer service can be from a company and developer that actually cares about their customer base.

Hope to hear more from you Rich, and thanks again for sharing your experience with us.

Jim

 

I also have a long history with Acronis, I think I used one the first on Win98, or maybe that was XP already. At that time, I remember having trouble booting from the recovery media on a portable PC, I wrote to them, it was a Saturday, and I received a few hours later a link to a new build that solved the issue. At that time I was using Acronis TI 6 I think. That was what I called "service".

Fast forward to these recent years, I purchased in 2011 the Acronis 2011 version and installed it on a brand new Dell running Windows 7 Ultimate.

I used the recovery media to perform also an image of my laptop C: drive. A while later, I messed up this laptop OS so I decided to restore the image done with Acronis Home 2011, and it worked fine, so it seemed. A few months later, I had an OS crash (BSOD) due to a graphic driver, and I performed a chkdsk at boottime, after that the Os partition was badly damaged. I restored a recent image of the OS, it seemed to work fine, except chkdsk would destroy it. I came to the conclusion that the metadata of my C: drive was corrupted, and couldn't find how it happened. Then I remembered the Acronis restoration a few months before and I am pretty sure it is what caused this medata corruption. It took me a while to repair this, I had to purchase a Casper license, create a similar partition on an external drive and perform, using Casper recovery media, a file by file copy of C:, then I restored back C: from the external drive et voilà, it was solved.

I have stopped since then using Acronis, relying now on Macrium, R-TT R-Drive Image and soon to AX64 much discussed here on Wilders.

I do not dare removing it from my Dell, having seen all the horror stories related to Acronis uninstall, I will probably try some day though, I only wish there were an Acronis "Cleaner" available somewhere.

 

Indeed, the huge ax64 thread mentions problems using ax64 if you had Acronis on your system. I too am thinking of purchasing ax64 but have the Seagate branded Acronis on my system now ... hope that will not be a problem in the future.

Acadia

 

Hi MerleOne

Perhaps this link will be of assistance to you whenever you are ready to remove Acronis True Image 2011.
http://kb.acronis.com/content/34876

It covers several versions with good instructions on removal. One would think a programs uninstall should do this properly, but unfortunately it seems too many companies like to leave remnants that often can cause problems, in Acronis case, it usually does as the normal uninstall procedure is both flawed and incomplete.

The above info. *should* get rid of the application, then you could do a manual search in "regedt32" in windows and search the registry for "Acronis" after removal.. You should not find many entries but in my experience there remain several even using the removal tools, but for the most part, they work to get rid of the deeply embedded parts.

Hope that helps Merle

Jim

 

Great thanks. I remember doing some of that manually on a PC where I wanted to install Shadow Protect and had to remove the filter drivers manually from the registry. BTW Shadow Protect 4 was no better than Acronis when it came to uninstall, because it messed up VSS on the laptop from which I removed it, I had to reinstall it to recover a working VSS.

 

My last purchase of ATI was the 2012 version which was an absolute disaster of a software. It would backup and act as if all was fine, but restores never worked right and I completely lost trust in it. However, I was very lucky that it uninstalled fine and cleaned up after itself. Mostly after reading of all the horror stories. Acronis will never set foot in my machines again.

 

Thanks MarcP for sharing that. It does make one wonder how a once solid application can become such a broken application, but when I have read Acronis forum, it is amazing the amount of problems folks are having, and yet it seems so few are truly addressing the various issues. I do know they are losing customers over many of these issues, and yet they appear to be oblivious to this for some odd reason. Their volunteer members that try and help others are limited because seldom does it appear that actual customer service rep's take part in the discussions. I hope that changes, but it is a problem also.

Have a good day MarcP
Jim

 

Yes, thank you. Don't even know what version of Acronis I have with the rebranded Seagate but if time comes that I want to remove it, this link is bookmarked.

Thanks again,
Acadia

 

Thanks so much Jim, I have never heard of "AX64 Time Machine" but you can bet I will be looking into it.
As I am sure you can appreciate having the software that I had a great track record with for saving systems, completely blow away Windows is more than just the failure of a program, for me its the end of an era...

 

You know this remark isn't new and maybe it will come to me but there was another product a few years ago that you could not use if Acronis had ever been on your pc and I cannot remember the name of it. I believe it was called Perfect Image now that I think about it which is an Avanquest product now. I would bet if you uninstalled it with Revo Uninstaller it would remove all the debris but I can understand your caution especially after what I just went through and would probably not try though I would be certain every entry was out of startup from Acronis now.

 

I tried Shadow Protect once and I remember that the rescue disk was really complicated and it is really expensive. I seem to remember $209 for 3 license version which is a bit to pricey for a home user, but the software itself is a class act.

 

Funny you should mention that as I just came from the Acronis Forum and noted there is a hotfix available for the issues I faced. The only problem is that the Acronis install that hosed my Sony laptop, I remember being asked if I wanted the newest version download which I chose, and that is what hosed my system completely. Therefore the fix would have been in that new install so it can't have helped me. If only I had noticed the Sony Ultrabook defaulted to System Restore enabled, I might have had another shot left in my clip! What a stupid move that was on the part of Sony.